1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for removing ligating fittings on smoking casings wherein the smoking casing called "fibrous casing" is filled in the shape of a column with raw material meat and both ends of the casing are ligated by ligating fittings of aluminum or the like, to provide smoked hams such as roast ham, boneless ham, etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an apparatus for romoving ligating fittings on smoking casings, smoked hams are conveyed along and parallel to an immovable deck plate with a plurality of conveyer plates mounted on a pair of endless rotatable bodies and moved over said deck plate, while being conveyed aslant to approach the side of the deck plate with a deflecting conveyer provided to be a little exposed above the deck plate and moved with a speed higher than that of the conveyer plate, and ears of said conveyed aslant smoked hams are sandwiched for conveyance by sandwiching converyers provided near the side of the deck plate and moved in the same direction and with the same speed as the conveyor plate while being inseted into lateral slots of guides provided along the inner side of the sandwiching converyers corresponding to the side of the deck plate to guide ligating fittings mounted on the bases of the ears toward the outer side of the guides so that the bases of the ears are cut off by cutters provided on the terminal positions of the guides at the insides of the ligating fittings for said guided smoked hams.
However, the movement of said deflecting conveyer is difficult to be transmitted to said conveyed smoked hams without any slippages to that the length of said deflecting conveyer tends to be longer so as to compensate for such slippages, resulting in the increase of the length of the whole apparatus and thus the difficulty of miniaturization of the apparatus. Also, if the length of the deflecting conveyer is left short to avoid this result, the bases of said ears of smoked hams tend not only to be cut off irregularly to interfere with the positive operation of the apparatus, but also to reduce the commercial value of the smoked ham.